Our Local Pathology Director at Nepean Hospital Dr James Branley has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia on the 2025 Australia Day Honour list, for his significant service to diagnostic pathology and medical administration.

This year’s Aus­tralia Day hon­ours list recog­nis­es 732 out­stand­ing and inspi­ra­tional Aus­tralians, with awards across three categories.

James Bran­ley is among 108 peo­ple who have been appoint­ed a Mem­ber of the Order of Aus­tralia (AM) and he has also been includ­ed in the COVID-19 Hon­our Roll.

“To be hon­est, I’m a bit embar­rassed to be sin­gled out in this way,” James said.

“But I am proud to have been able to use my skills to assist so many com­mu­ni­ties both here in Aus­tralia, and around the world.

“I’ve been priv­i­leged to be able to do this work and I hope I have made a difference.”

James, who is also a reservist with the Aus­tralian Defence Force, was instru­men­tal in the ear­ly days of our COVID-19 response, trav­el­ling to Wuhan, Chi­na to escort more than 270 Aus­tralians home via a tem­po­rary quar­an­tine cen­tre on Christ­mas Island. He helped set up and run the COVID-19 test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry on the island.

As the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ued, James went on to estab­lish and oper­ate an ADF lab­o­ra­to­ry at Nepean Hos­pi­tal, pro­vid­ing cru­cial COVID-19 test­ing for mil­i­tary per­son­nel based in the Mid­dle East. He was lat­er deployed to the Mid­dle East to help man­age a COVID-19 out­break there.

Twen­ty years ago, he was among the first team to arrive in Aceh, Indone­sia just three days after the dev­as­tat­ing 2004 Box­ing Day tsuna­mi. He spent two har­row­ing weeks pro­vid­ing vital med­ical care to survivors.

James also served in East Tim­or with the Unit­ed Nations, assist­ed with Australia’s response to Samoa’s measles epi­dem­ic and pro­vid­ed sup­port to his local com­mu­ni­ty in Nepean dur­ing the Hawkes­bury Riv­er flood­ing in March 2021.

James is a micro­bi­ol­o­gist and infec­tious dis­eases physi­cian who is the Head of the Depart­ment of Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases at Nepean Hos­pi­tal where he is active­ly involved in teach­ing and sup­port­ing med­ical stu­dents, post grad­u­ate spe­cial­ist trainees and infec­tion con­trol nurses.

As the Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor for Nepean Blue Moun­tains, he man­ages the pathol­o­gy ser­vice for the region and is respon­si­ble for ensur­ing the con­nect­ed­ness of pathol­o­gy with oth­er clin­i­cal ser­vices in the District.

Thanks for your years of ser­vice James. We’re so proud that you are part of our team here at NSW Health Pathology!

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